'Many late 19th-century paintings present the cypress as the morbid symbol that Hugo describes. Arnold Böcklin’s cypresses in his well-known “Island of the Dead,” for instance, leave little to the imagination. Gabriel-Albert Aurier interpreted van Gogh’s trees in dialogue with these morbid Symbolist paintings.'

https://hyperallergic.com/838381/the-dark-side-of-van-goghs-cypress-trees/